Thinking Inside-out of the Browser

[Richard Gaskin]

edutec wrote:

> Now back to my original request, how can I get a web page to display inside
> a Revolution stack?

Since we're still in the relatively early phase of the Web, so much content
is interwoven with form that the task of displaying Web pages is daunting.
Only a small handful of organizations have ever attempted it, far fewer have
actually shipped, and I believe none of them are full compliant with the W3C
standards.

Given the many challenges, if the Rev engine attenmpted to do it right they
would need a separate staff just for that one component.  However, it might
be possible to provide hooks for Microsoft's IE object and Apple's HTML
Rendering Library to do most of the work (is there acorollary for Mozilla on
Linux?), but even that far simpler approach has many challenges, not the
least of which would be ensuring that all the required components are
installed properly.  I'll leave it to Kevin to tell is if or when thsat's on
the priority list.

In the meantime I've been using the browser as a helper app for displaying
Web pages, and use the Rev-based app for everything else.

Net-deliverable media seems to be migrating toward what could be called
"formless content", initially driven by the demands of wireless handheld
devices.  SOAP, RDF, RSS, XMSG, WML, SMIL, etc. are relatively simple
XML-based content containers, leaving the presentation of the content up to
the client device -- in our case, Rev (SMIL is a bit of an exception but
since SMIL 1.0 can be easily displayed in a QT player object it's worth
mentioning).

I'm writing an RSS library, initially designed as part of WebMerge 2.3 but
in the interest of the community some form of it will likely be available
for free use by Rev developers, along with a newsfeed database and viewer to
demomonstrate how to work with the RSS spec (if I get time I'll add a simple
RSS generator that will create a summary feed for any site).

RSS and other RDF-based formats are a good place to start thinking about
ideal scenarios for applying Rev's unique strengths (http, ftp, ISO 8859-1
translation, rapid on-the-fly contruction of objects) and weaknesses (CSS
and JavaScript wpould be close to impossible to implement fully in
Transcript alone).

Lots of good RDF info can be found here: <http://www.w3.org/RDF/>

You may also find this intriguing -- note the use of the "card" metaphor:

  Decks and Cards

  WML pages are often called "decks". A deck contains a set
  of cards. A card element can contain text, markup, links,
  input-fields, tasks, images and more. Cards can be related
  to each other with links. 
<http://www.w3schools.com/wap/wml_format.asp>

:)

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site
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